It also may be a pragmatic one. As attitudes and beliefs about climate change have shifted — and the nation’s economic woes have come to the forefront — casting Obama’s plan as a job killer and “backdoor energy tax” may be a better strategy. Those were the overwhelming messages from Republican lawmakers criticizing Obama’s climate change plan on Tuesday and Wednesday.

“Our argument with the president right now is that he’s picking energy winners and losers, he’s harming innovation and there’s going to be a direct assault on jobs,” House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., told reporters Wednesday. “There are direct economic and policy challenges to what the president decides net. There will be ramifications that will be lifelong.”

Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., said Obama’s approach amounted to unilaterally imposing a “national energy tax” and a “war on jobs, our economy, affordable energy, American families and small businesses.”

Asked repeatedly Wednesday to address the science of the issue, Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., told reporters that while “we all want to make energy as clean as we can, as fast as we can,” Obama’s plan is nothing more than “a national energy tax.”